Emil Pirchan (1884–1957) studied architecture at the class of Otto Wagner (1841–1918) from 1903 to 1906 at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. He subsequently worked primarily as a commercial artist, and from 1919 was among the leading stage designers in the German-speaking world. By his own admission, the universally talented artist created more than 1,500 works of commercial art when he lived in Munich between 1908 and 1918, including some 50 posters, numerous logos, bookplates, poster stamps, designs for packaging, technical illustrations for user manuals, calendar sheets, invitation cards, book illustrations, templates for flyleaves, coloring books for children as well as playing cards. In 1913, he founded a private art school for advertising art in Munich. His works in the genre of commercial art, which the artist occasionally turned to during the interwar period, mostly related to the theater, as in the case of the poster advertising the
Salzburg Festival Funfair, a fundraising event benefitting a pension insurance company for soloists of the German Theater in Prague. In the metropolis on the Vltava, where the artist lived and worked from 1932 to 1936, Pirchan also participated in Czech theater productions.
IR, 2023
